


In At The Deep End

by likethenight



Category: Ant-Man (2015), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ant-Man (2015) Post-Credits Scene, Ant-Man (2015) Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-13 00:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4500963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Approximately a week after Captain America and Iron Man's epic falling-out, Scott Lang gets a text message. Over the next few hours he meets the Black Widow, the Falcon and Captain America, not to mention someone else he'd grown up thinking was dead...and does his first proper superhero job. It's pretty clear to him from the get-go that he's in way over his head.  (a look at what might have happened after the Ant-Man end credits scene)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In At The Deep End

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to sasha_b for the beta-read and the US-picking! All remaining mistakes are entirely my own. I have less than no technical knowledge so the technical bits are basically made up, and the Russian words that Scott describes to Natasha are taken from Google Translate because I also have no Russian; please forgive my dramatic licence and fudging of details.

Approximately a week after Captain America’s epic fall-out with Iron Man hits the headlines, Scott Lang gets a text message from an unidentified number. “You available for a job?” it reads, and Scott pauses to think for approximately half a second before replying, “Maybe…depends who’s asking” - this is roughly three hours after his slightly confused conversation with Luis about the stupid fine writer and the guy asking if she knows about a guy who can shrink, so he’s been kind of waiting for a call from the Avengers. Well, not that the Avengers quite exist right now, so really, from one Avenger in particular. Part of him has been worried that the Falcon wants to find him and make him pay for that horribly embarrassing moment at the Avengers’ HQ, but this doesn’t sound like that. Well, unless the Falcon isn’t into being upfront when calling someone out, of course. He hopes that the Falcon has forgiven him for handing his ass to him like that - he’s actually struggling to forgive himself, because the Falcon is the _coolest_ , and awesome as it was to beat him Scott still feels really bad about it because actually the last thing he wanted was to _beat_ him. Ask for his autograph, maybe, but not kick his ass. 

Anyway, the Falcon clearly wants his help because another message comes back in almost immediately, “Be at these co-ordinates at 22:00 hours precisely for exfil. Bring the suit.” What follows is, Scott discovers after plugging the numbers into Google, the location of some apparently deserted scrubland just outside San Francisco, and he isn’t quite sure what he’s getting himself into - never having served in the military, he only has a faint idea of what ‘exfil’ means, for a start - but he goes there anyway, even turns up early, the suit crammed into his backpack and the helmet in his hand. There’s a weird noise and a rush of air around a minute to ten but he can’t see anything - well, it’s dark, but still, anything landing would have to have landing lights, right? - and he’s still not sure what’s going on when a woman’s voice cuts through the darkness. 

“So you’re Ant-Man. Follow me.” 

Scott isn’t quite sure how he’s supposed to be following someone he can’t see, but then there’s a kind of shimmer in the air and a shaft of light, illuminating a woman in a very tight-fitting catsuit with perfectly styled red hair, and he has to blink and swallow a couple of times because seriously, the _Black Widow_ is here to pick him up? Scott follows her as ordered, dumbstruck, and it isn’t until he’s inside the jet that he realizes that he just stepped into an _invisible jet plane_. Well. Maybe not quite invisible, it’s perfectly visible on the inside, but he sure as hell couldn’t see it from the outside, just that shaft of light and the woman and seriously, how is this his life now?

“Strap yourself in,” the Black Widow says, all business, as she heads back to the pilot seat, and Scott obediently sits down in the bucket seat she indicated and does up the safety straps, wondering whether he should say something, make some conversation or whatever, because he’s rather conscious that he hasn’t said a word to her yet, what with being so surprised to see her and all. She doesn’t seem the conversational sort, but still, it’d be rude not to try, wouldn’t it?

“Uh…” he begins, very smooth, Lang, very smooth, “what exactly does this job involve? If you don’t mind me asking.”

She doesn’t answer for a moment, flicking switches and easing the joystick back as the plane lifts vertically into the air, and Scott wonders what the hell he’s getting himself into, but once they’re at altitude, the Black Widow turns in her seat, her beautiful face an impassive mask, but Scott thinks he detects a fraction of tightness around her eyes, just the barest hint of tension in her voice. 

“We need you to take an up-close look at a piece of machinery. See if you can take it apart.”

“We being…you and the Falcon?”

She shrugs. “And Cap. It’s kind of urgent. We’re not exactly in a position to ask Stark right now, and Falcon said he knew a guy.” Her lips twist into a faint approximation of a smile. “I asked how he knew you. He wasn’t exactly forthcoming.”

Scott pulls a face, ashamed. “I…uh. Yeah.” He isn’t about to spill the beans, not if the Falcon wants it kept quiet, which fair enough, he can understand that. “I may have…uh, broken into the Avengers headquarters. I needed a, a thing that was being stored there. We didn’t know you guys had moved in, we thought it was a Stark warehouse, a mothballed one. I’m sorry.”

The Black Widow smiles again, that odd little twist of her mouth. “No matter. I’ll get the story out of one or other of you someday.” She pauses. “Incidentally, how do _you_ feel about the registration of enhanced individuals?”

Scott blinks at her, completely thrown by her sudden change of tack, although once he’s had a moment or two to think about it he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. He may have shown up in response to the Falcon’s call, but this whole superhuman registration thing looks like it’s about to blow up bigger than that three-helicarrier pile-up in the middle of DC, and it makes sense that they should want to find out whether he’s on their side. And that they sent her to do it; her reputation precedes her, especially after the infodump that accompanied the pile-up, and Scott wonders whether it occurred to them that he might just be too intimidated to say anything other than what he thinks she wants to hear. He may have been in jail when it was all going on, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t read the papers. In fact, it meant he had more time to read them, and more of them than he’d have had on the outside. So yeah, he knows a bit about her, and frankly, he is not at all composed right now.

“Uh,” he says after a moment, “I hadn’t really thought about it applying to me. I mean, I’m not really…particularly enhanced.”

The Black Widow laughs, a short, humorless cough of a sound. “Neither is the Falcon. Or War Machine, or Hawkeye. Neither am I, and neither, when it comes down to it, is Stark. The definition encompasses all those who have access to powers, abilities or equipment that ordinary people do not. So yes, it applies to you. How do you feel about that?” She fixes him with a gimlet eye, and he blinks again, thinking hard.

“I guess…well, I just wanted to go straight, for my little girl. I need to keep her safe.” He thinks again. “I can’t do that, can I, if my name’s on some register? I can’t keep her secret if my identity isn’t secret. She already nearly got hurt by someone who wanted to hurt me, I can’t put her in that position again. If I’m on some register, then anyone can look up who I am and where I live, anyone can get to my little girl.” 

“Exactly. Some of us didn’t have a choice about our identities going public, but we still get by. We make our own secrets, we make arrangements to protect what we need to. Full disclosure doesn’t exactly go along with that.”

Scott lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding as he realizes he’s made the right answer. Well, he was pretty sure it was right, given what he’s been reading in the news, but still. She said they were working with Captain America, but who knows, she could have been bluffing him. Could still be, now he comes to think of it, and he pulls in another breath to hold, just in case.

“Relax, Lang,” she says after letting him sweat for a moment or two. “We’re all on the same side. You don’t have to fight for the cause if you don’t want to, but for now we need your help.”

She’s no more forthcoming than that for the rest of the flight, deflecting his questions about the job and settling into a slightly tense silence as she runs her eyes over the displays and controls, piloting the jet to their mysterious destination. Scott fidgets a bit in his seat, glancing around him at the intimidatingly military interior of the jet, wondering if this came from that shady SHIELD agency, or if this is the Avengers’ jet, or maybe Tony Stark still has their jet and the Black Widow has acquired this from somewhere else, or…

Scott is still speculating about the jet when he realises that they’re descending, the engines whining as the Black Widow sets the plane down with barely a jolt. 

“Come on,” she says, unbuckling her harness and standing up. “We don’t know how much time we have, and this may be a trap.”

Scott fumbles with his own harness, taking a few moments to get it to flick open and let him stand. “A trap?” It’s too late to back out now but this new piece of information isn’t entirely welcome. 

“We’re not sure. It seems too good to be true, which usually means it’s a trap.” She’s already opening the exit hatch and heading down the stairs, so all Scott can do is to trail after her. It’s still dark outside but it looks like they’ve landed in a vacant lot, overgrown with weeds, next to a derelict warehouse. Glancing behind him, he sees - well, absolutely nothing, so the invisible jet is evidently still invisible. How _is_ this his life now?

Scott follows the Black Widow into the warehouse, where they find - well, it’s the Falcon, and Scott’s about to apologize for the last time they met when he realises that the other guy with him really is Captain America and he’s standing over…well, the light from the fluorescent bulb overhead isn’t great, but it looks like a guy with long, dirty hair and a - is that a metal arm? - okay, a metal arm, which seems to be caught in some kind of machinery, and the guy looks like it’s been a long time since he last had chance to have a shower, and he looks like he’s in a lot of pain, but he also looks somehow familiar, and it takes Scott a moment to slot the pieces into place, but there’s something about the look of concern on Captain America’s face that tips him off, and he almost swallows his tongue when the revelation hits him.

“Uh, Ms…Ms Widow?” he whispers, unsure how to address her but pretty certain that some degree of respect is probably required.

“Call me Natasha,” she murmurs in reply, a warm note of amusement in her voice. 

“Oh…right, okay. Uh. Natasha, is that…is that _Bucky Barnes_?”

“We believe so.” The tension is back around her eyes, or perhaps it never went away, perhaps it’s just more intense now, Scott can’t tell. “It’s a long story, but we need to get him out of there, and the quicker the better.” She raises her voice to attract the attention of the Captain and the Falcon, neither of whom appear to have noticed their arrival, so absorbed are they in the plight of the man in front of them. “Steve, Sam? I have our safebreaker.”

Three pairs of eyes turn to scrutinise Scott, and before he really has time to examine the fact that the Widow didn’t address Bucky Barnes, just Cap and the Falcon, he finds himself having to make a huge effort not to squirm with embarrassment - this is two of the Avengers, and Scott’s two childhood heroes, and he’s already embarrassed about his previous meeting with the Falcon, but Captain America _and_ Bucky Barnes who everyone thought was dead…well, everyone thought Cap was dead and then he turned out not to be so maybe it’s not so unlikely, but still…he just about manages a smile and a “hi” before Captain America is stepping forward to shake his hand.

“Mr Lang. Thank you for coming.”

“Uh. Call me Scott.” Clearly Scott will be winning no awards for eloquence this evening. “It’s…it’s my pleasure. I kind of owe the Falcon a favor.” 

The Falcon, standing behind Captain America’s right shoulder, pulls a face, the sort of face Scott has come to recognise as “don’t go into details, idiot, he doesn’t know” and okay, he can understand that, he can understand being new on a team and not wanting your team leader to know about your embarrassing defeats, and even more so when your team leader is Captain freaking _America_. So Scott shuts up and smiles sheepishly and shakes the Falcon’s hand as Captain America says, “Call me Steve. I understand you’ve met Sam.”

“So what do you need me to do?” Scott asks, redundantly, it’s screamingly obvious what they need but hey, he’s nervous.

“We need you to take a look inside that thing,” the Falcon - Sam - says, gesturing at the machinery that’s holding Bucky Barnes’ metal arm in place. “See if you can undo it without setting anything off.”

“There’s no doubt that this is a trap,” says Steve, and Scott has to force himself to listen, to focus, over the roar in his ears that is the thought of calling Captain America by his first name, of potentially _saving Bucky Barnes_ , who isn’t dead after all. “Chances are, that contraption is wired to blow, or to release something noxious, or to kill the captive. We’ve rigged the surveillance but that’s only going to hold them for so long.”

“It’s easier to feed a loop of footage past someone when the subject doesn’t move or make much noise for hours on end,” says Natasha from behind him, “but sooner or later some bright spark is going to notice, and we’ve already been here for several hours. We need to make our move soon.”

“Which means you putting on your super-suit and doing whatever it is you do,” says Sam, no rancor at all in his voice. “Combine your burglary skills with your shrinking skills, right?”

“You’ve got comms in that thing?” asks Natasha, gesturing to the helmet in Scott’s hand. He nods, and she holds out a hand; Scott gives her the helmet and she fiddles with it for a few seconds and then hands it back. “There. Now we can communicate while you’re in there.”

There’s a brief, awkward silence, and then Scott realises that they’re waiting for him to get into the suit, shrink down and get in there. He gives them a sheepish grin and briefly debates whether he wants to go behind a pillar or something to get changed, being in the presence of a lady and Captain America and a guy he’s already embarrassed and Bucky freaking Barnes, and all. How do all those superheroes even do this? Then he realises that Natasha is quirking an eyebrow at him and glancing at the nearest pillar, gesturing subtly at it with her chin when she sees she’s caught his eye. So he flashes an apologetic grin and shuffles behind the pillar and changes into his suit as fast as he can, trying hard not to imagine the looks he’s sure are passing between them all. He leaves his clothes in an untidy pile with his backpack and steps out from behind the pillar, to approving nods from the superheroes and a faint but noticeable roll of the eyes from the captive. Speaking of whom, he’s still wondering why none of them have really acknowledged or spoken to the man in the machine yet. Well, sure, he’s supposed to be dead, and all, but so was Cap and nobody’s been ignoring him.

“Ready?” Natasha asks, and Scott nods. 

“Ready.” He steps up to stand in front of the machine and offers a smile to the man in its grasp. “Sergeant Barnes, sir, it’s an honor,” he finds himself saying, quietly. “I’ll do my best to get you out of here.” But the man just stares blankly up at him, like he hasn’t understood a word Scott has said, and Scott doesn’t quite know what he was expecting, but surely a little more than empty eyes and a sullen expression? Scott coughs, awkwardly, and launches himself at the machine, pressing the buttons on his gauntlets and shrinking down - just like leaping through a keyhole - to land on Barnes’ metal arm.

“He doesn’t know who he is,” comes Natasha’s voice, very soft, in his ears, and Scott glances at her, then at Cap, who doesn’t even bother trying to hide the pain in his eyes. 

“I…oh. Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t know. I mean, I thought…” Jeez, Scott, you’re starting to sound like Luis, shut _up_. Scott pulls himself together. “Okay. I’m gonna go take a look inside this thing.” He looks at the entrance to the machine, then steps carefully inside, wondering whether there might be any ants in the vicinity who he might be able to persuade to help out if he needs them. “Okay, it’s kind of like teeth in here, like teeth on a cog, and they’re gripping tight to his arm. And wires, and…okay, there’s some sort of spring-loaded thing that’s plugged into the arm itself. Like, there’s a plate been removed, and there’s a port, and there’s writing but I can’t read it because it’s in Russian.”

“What does it look like? The writing. Can you describe the shapes of the letters?” Natasha asks; she seems to be running the comms on this one, but then she’s also the one with the fluency in Russian, of course. In the background Scott can hear Steve murmuring, presumably relaying what’s going on to Barnes; evidently they haven’t given him comms, which is probably a good thing, all things considered.

“Okay, there’s, I guess it’s all in capitals, there’s an A, B, A, P, a backwards N, another backwards N with a squiggle above it, an H, A, backwards R, that’s the first word, then a K with a weird squiggly upper arm, H, O, then two uprights with a cross-piece across them at the top, like if you moved the crosspiece of an H up to the top, then the weird K again, then an A.” He starts looking more closely at the connection between the machine and the port while he waits for the Black Widow to translate, but jumps when she swears softly in his ear. 

“What?”

“It says ‘kill switch’,” she says, her tone an odd mixture of resignation and exasperation rather than the distress Scott supposes he’d have expected.

“Wait, what? They labeled it?” comes Sam’s voice, and Steve sharp in the background, almost over the top, “Kill switch? Can you disable it?”, and Sam again, “Why would they label it when they knew what it would do?”

“Who knows?” comes Natasha’s voice, cool and irritated over the top of the pair of them. “Perhaps they wanted him to know they could shut him down, although I imagine they had a few remotely activated failsafes as well. Who wants to get close enough to him to remove that plate and press that button?” She makes a sound of disgust, and Scott is suddenly very aware that there is far more going on here than he realises. “No, you know, I suspect they put that in there just for him. Just so he knew that he was disposable if it came to it, and it’s probably coded so that he himself can’t set it off. Can’t have their best asset deciding he doesn’t want the life they gave him.” Scott can hear the pain in her voice now, and he really doesn’t know how to make it better, but seriously, that’s fucked-up, putting a kill switch in a guy when you’re not going to use it, just so that he knows it’s there, but not letting him use it himself. What the fuck happened to you, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes?

Scott gives himself a mental shake and gets back to examining the kill switch. “Uh huh, it looks like a pressure pad type thing, so once it’s pressed in it’s activated but it only actually kicks in when it’s released again. There’s a gap in the housing so I should be able to get in - there, I’m in - and…okay, it’s all wired in, and uh, okay, I can disconnect the wires, but there’s a risk there might be failsafes. You know, cut a wire and, uh, boom?”

“What color are the wires?” Natasha wants to know. “I know a little about the people who did this, how they worked,” and okay, that makes sense to Scott, everyone knows she used to be a Russian spy and all.

“Red, blue, brown, blue again, green. Going from left to right, that is.”

Natasha says something that is probably a Russian curse, then draws in a deep breath. “All right, Lang, I know who did this. The red wire is a red herring, so to speak. You need to cut the two blue wires and the green one, together.”

“Okay, tiny problem. I have wire cutters in here but they’re small, like me. Too small to cut those wires all at once.” Scott pauses, thinks. “Have you got a pair of cutters out there?”

“Right here,” comes Sam’s voice. “Can you get them in there?”

“There’s just about enough space to get them into the machine, and just enough length on the wires to get them out of the housing so the cutters can get to them, I think,” says Scott. “I’ll come out there and guide you in, then I can put the wires into the cutters, then on my word, you cut.”

Steve lets out a distinctly un-Captain-America-like curse and Scott hears the warmth in Natasha’s voice as she says, “Language,” there’s clearly an inside joke there, but this is no time to pay attention to jokes. He makes his way back out of the machine and waves, and Sam hands the cutters to Natasha. 

“You’ve got the steadiest hands,” he says, and Natasha shrugs.

“If you say so, Mr Para-Rescue Medic,” she says, but she takes the cutters anyway and approaches the machine. 

“Okay,” says Scott, “I’ll hold them and guide you in, there’s not much space.” He reaches up and takes hold of the end of the cutters, and he hears a little huff of surprise from Natasha as she feels him take them. “I have the same grip and power at this size as I do at full size. Comes in kind of handy.”

“I’ll say,” says Sam, quietly, but this isn’t the time for that, either, and he doesn’t say any more, to Scott’s relief, that’s definitely a conversation for another day.

Scott eases the wire cutters into the machine, and the distance between the entrance and the wires is almost longer than the cutters’ handles, almost, but not quiet, and when he gets them there he murmurs to Natasha to hold them still, then prises them open, just far enough to feed the wires in. There isn’t much play in the wires, once they’re eased out of the switch’s housing, but he just about gets them there. “Two blue and green, together, right?”

“That’s right,” says Natasha, and her voice is as steady as the cutters in her hand. “Two blue, and the green. You got them in place?”

“I got them. Two blue, and green. Hold on, I’m gonna climb onto the cutters so I can hold the wires in place, otherwise you’ll be cutting me in two as well, and I think you still need me for the rest of this dumb contraption.” Scott hops up onto the cutters, grabs the wires and holds them firmly between the blades. “Okay, cut. And let’s hope the failsafes don’t involve anything nasty happening to Sergeant Barnes. Or to me,” he adds, because it would be especially nice not to die on this one, childhood heroes or no childhood heroes.

Natasha draws in a swift, sharp breath and squeezes the cutters together, and Scott watches them shear through the wires, though he doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath as he does so until the wires are cut cleanly through and nothing has happened.

“All clear?” Natasha asks after a moment, and Scott lets out the breath he was holding and returns his focus to the task at hand.

“All clear. Let me guide these things back out again, don’t want to knock anything else.” He carefully guides the cutters back out of the machine, then heads back inside to carry on checking things out. “Okay, I’m gonna ease this thing off the switch now that we’ve deactivated it, and then I’ll…oh, wait.” His attention is caught by something he hadn’t noticed before, connected to the thing that is holding the kill switch down.

“What?” Natasha wants to know.

“There’s something…I gotta say, I don’t know _everything_ about electronics, but this looks like some kind of transmitter chip. I don’t know what you guys are up against, but whoever they are, I guess the cameras and bugs and whatever weren’t the only kind of surveillance they put on this. It looks like it’s rigged to transmit a signal when the pressure pad is released on the switch.” He’s very carefully not saying ‘kill switch’, not ever again, because that is just sick, what’s been done to Sergeant Barnes. “I can deactivate it, but there’s no way of knowing that deactivating it won’t also send a signal. How close by do you think these guys are?”

“We did several sweeps of the vicinity when we arrived,” Sam says; in the background Steve is still murmuring to Barnes, but Scott realises he hasn’t yet heard Barnes make a single sound, or give any indication that he hears or understands anything that’s being said to him. “Found nobody. Nat took out the surveillance, and they haven’t noticed that yet, but there’s nobody coming swinging on in here the moment anything goes off. We think.”

Scott is about to wonder what the point is of putting surveillance on something you can’t get to quickly if something happens, but Natasha is already speaking. “Figure they probably rigged this place to blow sky-high, or gas us, or fill us with bullets. I didn’t find anything when I swept the building, but I couldn’t check inside that thing. So that transmitter chip is probably talking to something else in the machine. Find it, disable that, then come back and disable the chip and take the pressure pad off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Scott says, resisting the temptation to snap to attention; he was never in the military, but there’s just something about her tone. That, and he’s terrified of her. Leaving the pressure pad and its transmitter behind, he heads off further into the machine, following the wire from the transmitter; at least whoever did this didn’t think to put a wireless one in. Small mercies.

The wire leads right into the heart of the machine, and the size of the thing would indicate that it’s more than just a mantrap, now that Scott comes to think of it. Well, you’d need something pretty heavy to keep Barnes immobilised, but from the looks of that metal arm, it’s not just a sleeve, it’s an actual prosthetic, and surely it’d be possible to have some sort of device that would immobilise him via the electronics of that arm and be much smaller. So the odds are that this thing does indeed contain something else, something deadly. Time to find out. Follow the wire, see where it leads. Scott keeps up a running commentary for the benefit of the people outside the machine, but less than half of his attention is on what he’s saying. He follows the wire all the way to the end, where it’s connected to a little box with other wires extending from it to the tops of three canisters full of a bright, luminous yellow-green liquid that looks as though it’s swirling and steaming of its own accord.

“Okay,” he says, trying to keep his voice from shaking, “this could be a bomb, or gas canisters, or any number of other things, but whatever it is, it looks bad.” He describes it over the comms, doing a careful, wary circle of the whole setup. “The wires go into the seals of the canisters, and I guess the explosive charge, if there is one, is going to be in those seals, but I can’t see it. It’s just, wire, into middle of seal, then nothing. I can’t see what the wire’s attached to because the contents of the canister are in the way.”

“I don’t suppose there’s some handy Russian labels on those, too?” comes Sam’s voice, trying for casual but missing by at least two tension-filled miles. 

“Nothing. Not a thing. I don’t know if this shit’s rigged to blow, or to break the glass and poison us all, or what.”

There’s a long silence, and then Scott just catches a voice, picked up by the microphones on the others’ comms, rough and scratchy from disuse, each word measured out, heavy with the pain it clearly costs the speaker. “It’s both. I watched them fit it. They talked. Thought maybe I wasn’t listening. Didn’t understand. Anything happens, transmitter sparks, charges break the glass, gas incapacitates anyone nearby. Then, gas ignites, whole building goes up. And before you ask, no, I don’t know how to disable it. Need Dernier for this one.”

“Dernier,” Steve says, his voice unnaturally loud in Scott’s ears, “you remember?”

“Not the time, Stevie,” says Barnes, and his voice is still rusty. “Tell your little buddy he needs to be fucking careful.”

Scott coughs, conscious that he’s just been listening in on an exchange that would probably have been better in private. “Uh, could someone tell Sergeant Barnes I’ll be extremely careful? And thank him for the information.” He does another circuit of the canisters as Steve relays his message to Barnes. “Okay, so there’s a risk that if we cut the transmitter wire, the action of cutting it will signal to the charges that it’s time to explode, right?”

“That’s right,” comes Natasha’s voice over the comms. “Severing the electrical supply may trigger an explosion.”

“Okay. So there’s that. And we can’t get to the charges because they’re inside the seals, or inside the canisters themselves. So we can’t tell.” He takes a deep breath. “Okay, I’m out of ideas here. Except that we have to take a huge gamble on whether whoever did this is clever enough to rig that sort of thing.” He pauses, and an idea comes to him. “Wait. Or, given that they didn’t set up a wireless transmitter, they’re counting on the fact that nobody could get inside this machine in the first place without triggering the switch in Sergeant Barnes’ arm. Switch for him, this stuff for anyone dumb enough to try rescuing him, boom. So they’re not expecting anyone to be able to get in here to disable the charges. So why bother with the fancy technology? Why not have a simple setup that just dies when the transmitter cable is cut?” He takes another breath. “Nobody was expecting that you’d call me in. Who knows if they even know about me? The last Ant-Man stopped anting over twenty-five years ago, why would they even think it?” He’s hitting his stride now, as the blinding logic of it strikes him. “I’ve been looking at this from this perspective because I’m _in here_. Because I can. But who else in the world would even think of it? I mean, yeah, it’s a huge fucking gamble, but really, why waste expensive tech when what you want is something quick and dirty? And the outside of that machine looks pretty dirty to me. Not like something full of fancy stuff.” He winds to a stop, and there’s another long silence, then a brief, whispered discussion between Sam, Natasha and Steve that he doesn’t catch more than about half of - but it’s clear to him from what they’re saying that whoever has done this is on the run, on the outs, not likely to have access to high-end technology any more. Maybe once, from the sound of it, but not now.

“Okay,” Steve says, after a moment, all the command back in his voice. “Cut the transmitter wire, please, Scott.”

“And let’s hope you’re right,” says Sam.

Scott chuckles, not at all hysterically. “I still don’t have wire cutters big enough to cut this thing. Uh, I’m kind of in the base of the machine, at the back. Could someone maybe slide the cutters in on the floor and I can see if I can get them up here?”

There’s a brief pause, and then Scott catches sight of Natasha, or at least a lock of her hair, as she contorts herself to reach in under the machine. “Here. Where am I aiming them?”

“The wire’s too far in to…wait, what am I saying? Crap. Sorry, Natasha. I think I can detach the wire from its fixings all the way back up to the switch, and then there should be enough play in it to get the wire cutters in to cut it at the transmitter end, not at this end. Sorry. Not thinking straight.”

She laughs, and there’s genuine warmth in her voice when she replies. “No problem. I think we’re all a little tense right now. Okay, I’ll see you back at the other side.”

Scott makes his way back up the wire, carefully detaching it from the clips holding it in place and easing it along so that there’s enough slack in it by the time he gets to the top that the wire cutters will just about reach it. Well, almost. Natasha slips the cutters into the machine again, but they won’t quite reach, and after a little delicate pushing and pulling, Scott puts the wire down and heads out to the handle end of the cutters. 

“I’ll take them from here, they need to go just a little further in.” At Natasha’s unconvinced expression, he shrugs and grins and flexes his muscles. “Same strength as when I’m normal-sized, remember?”

“Take it easy, Ant-Boy,” she says, but she sounds amused, and Scott has literally no time at all to wonder at how he appears now to be flirting with the Black Widow, because he needs to be getting these damn wire cutters into the machine and cutting that wire like _yesterday_. Carefully he tugs the cutters into place, wedging one arm against the wall of the machine so that he can push against the other one once the wire is in place, there, that’s it, get the wire caught so it can’t move and then run to the other end of the cutters and push on the handle and don’t think about the possibility that this might blow you all to kingdom come and then… _click_ as the wire severs, incredibly loudly, echoing in his head, and nothing else happens, no explosion, no gas, no armed terrorists pouring into the room, nothing.

A collective sigh of relief is heaved, hissing over the comms, and then the final part of the task is ahead: opening the mechanism that is holding Sergeant Barnes’ arm in place. Compared to the charges and wires it’s child’s play, locating the fastening and triggering it, then dashing back to the pressure pad and easing it off, another collective sigh when nothing happens to Barnes, and then Scott hops out of the machine and brings himself back to full size as Captain America hefts the machine open enough to allow Barnes to free his arm, then letting it drop back down with a loud clang. Nothing happens, nothing explodes, and nobody dies. Tense congratulations are shared, and Steve shakes Scott’s hand very seriously and thanks him for his help, and Scott almost swallows his tongue again before he can stutter out that it was his pleasure.

“It’s all right,” whispers Natasha in his ear, “he brings that out in most people.” And Steve blushes, and Scott feels a tiny bit better about himself. 

Sam claps him on the back and thanks him, too, and Scott is beginning to apologize for what happened at Avengers headquarters, but Sam grins and interrupts him before he can say anything much. “Nothing to apologize for, my man. I think we’re even now, anyway.” 

Sam is glancing frantically at Steve to see whether he’s caught their conversation, but it’s Natasha who says “One of these days I’m going to get you to tell me that story,” and _then_ Steve is looking quizzically at them, even as he’s helping Barnes to his feet. 

And then, there is Bucky Barnes, in front of Scott, looking like he’s been to hell and back, which let’s face it, Scott has no idea what he’s been through, but hell and back sounds like it’s probably an enormous understatement, and he very stiffly shakes Scott’s hand, like it’s something he’s almost forgotten how to do, and thanks him in that rusty, painful voice. Scott doesn’t dare ask what happened to him, or what he’ll do now, he just mumbles that it was his pleasure, again, and then Steve and Sam are walking Barnes out of the building and Scott is left with Natasha, and he’s still in his suit, and he isn’t quite sure what to do.

“Come on,” she says, a little smile on her face, “we have to get out of here pretty fast, in case cutting that transmitter wire really did set something off with whoever’s watching us. Grab your stuff, you can get changed in the jet. I promise I won’t look.” 

It’s pretty much all Scott can do to follow her, out to the invisible jet; Steve and Sam and Barnes are already nowhere to be seen. “What’s going to happen to him?” he finds himself asking, and Natasha shrugs. 

“I don’t know. Technically he’s public enemy number one, or he would be if the powers that be knew he existed. But technically he’s also the United States’ longest-serving prisoner of war, so practically, there’s probably a lot of legal wrangling in his immediate future. But Steve and Sam will look after him.”

“And you?” Scott can’t help asking. 

“Me, too,” she says, “where I can. I know a thing or two about being an enemy of the state. And about coming back from that.”

“So,” Scott says, some time later, when they’re in the air, and he’s gotten changed out of his suit and back into his regular gear in one of the wing compartments where Natasha can’t see him, although who knows how many cameras are in this thing, “this is where you drop me at home and I never see you guys again, right?”

She shrugs, and turns to him with that little smile again. “Oh, I don’t know. This is definitely where I drop you home. But as to whether you see us again, that depends on you. You never know, we may have need of your skills on a more…permanent basis, shall we say?”

And Scott, on considering it, finds that actually he likes the sound of that. Very much indeed. And Cassie is going to _love_ it.

**Author's Note:**

> For a Winter-Soldier's-eye-view of this story, check out _[Ghost in the Machine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6085936)_...


End file.
